The present invention relates to a substantially solvent free aqueous based degreasing concentrate solution for removing heavy soils from manufactured parts or the like.
In the past, many hydrocarbon solvents have been used to degrease and prepare parts for plating or coating operations or the like. Particularly, fluorinated or chlorinated hydrocarbons such as Freon.RTM. and the like have received extremely favorable use in degreasing operations in industry. Such solvents are effective in removing even the toughest industrial soils. However, during drying phases invariably some of the solvents are lost to the atmosphere. Because of these losses, extremely large quantities of these solvents are expelled into the atmosphere by industry each year.
Of course, in recent years fluorocarbons have come under increasing attack due to ozone layer depletion, believed to be caused by fluorocarbons. Thus, while many industries continue to use the fluorocarbon type solvents as degreasers, manufacturers of solvent cleaning equipment have concentrated on attempting to reduce effluents to the atmosphere by special condensation machinery and the like. Even with improved degreasing machinery available today thousand of tons of fluorocarbons are released to the atmosphere every year because of solvent type degreasing operations.
Thus, there has been an increasing need in the art to provide a solvent free degreasing system which would replace in whole or in part these prior art solvent systems. Aqueous systems have been favored because of low environmental impact. However, the prior art has seemingly failed to provide a suitable aqueous system, that would work in industrial degreasing operations, to effectively remove tough soils such as rust inhibitors, greases, oils, buffing compounds, waxes, cutting oils, forming oils and quench oils, for instance. Other aqueous cleaners are undesirable in certain applications in that some constituents used in such cleaners may not be compatible with the substrates to be cleaned. Thus, it has been a goal in the art and is an object of the present invention to produce an aqueous degreasing composition which is strong enough and effective enough to replace a solvent type degreasing system.
Also, it has been a goal in the art to produce a cleaner which will not detrimentally effect substrate parts to be degreased.